8.
THE HESPERUS HOVERED against the horizon, holding its position against the rising sun.
God of the Evening Star—Venus. That’s what Hesperus meant in Greek, Luke had been told. But it was frequently mistranslated in Latin as Phosphorus. Namely, Lucifer. Of all the names in creation, why risk that invocation?
There wasn’t anything especially demonic about the Hesperus. The research station looked a lot like an offshore oil rig. It sat atop the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in any ocean. The trench went down six miles—the same distance to reach the top of Mount Everest. And Luke’s brother was two miles below that, in the heart of a narrower fissure called Challenger Deep.
The Hesperus floated on huge nitrogen-filled bladders. Each one can shoulder ten tons, Leo had told Luke earlier. The Hesperus floats on thousands of those things.
Its sheer enormity was staggering. Though squat—most of its structures were only a single story—the station sprawled across the water like a raucous frontier town. Ten thousand metric tons of low-slung architecture, salt-whitened scaffolding, and waterproof storage canisters. Dozens of ships were moored around it like moons ringing a planet.
Leo said: “Impressive, huh? That’s what happens when a bunch of first-world countries toss their moolah in a big pot.”
“It is amazing,” Luke said.
“Not half as amazing as what’s happening down below.”
A shiver cat-walked up Luke’s spine. They were now floating above the Trieste—above Clayton. And Luke would be down with his brother soon enough.
Something has surfaced… get here as soon as you can manage.
Leo nosed the yacht alongside the Hesperus and docked neat as a pin. By the time Luke had gathered his belongings and returned topside, stationed soldiers in camouflage fatigues had swung a gangplank into position.
Who the hell wears camouflage on the ocean? Luke wondered.
“Should we go?” he asked Leo.
“Not me, Doc. All this”—Leo nodded at the soldiers—“is above my pay grade.”
How long had Luke known Leo? No more than a few hours. Seemed much longer. He wanted Leo to come with him, pay grades be damned. But he could only shake his hand. “Pleasure meeting you. Thanks for the lift. And the squid.”
“Anytime, Doc. I’m so glad you’re here. Like I said, I’m hopeful.”
Luke headed down the gangplank and slid into the backseat of a golf cart. An adenoidal soldier drove them down a walkway strung with windowless structures. People passed in and out of doors, some in fatigues and others in lab coats. The Hesperus reminded Luke of a MASH unit: the stumpy outbuildings, the hum of generators, the calls going out over a loudspeaker system: L-Team to SQR, Code Orange… L-Team to SQR, Code Orange…
The cart snaked down narrow paths strung between the buildings, jogging left and right. Sparks fanned from a darkened doorway; the soldier drove through the glittering fall, the embers falling painlessly on Luke’s exposed arms—they had the dry sulfurous smell of Fourth of July sparklers. The cart shot through a tight corridor between two domed structures tipped with inverted satellite dishes that resembled a pair of perfect conical breasts, veered left, and followed the edge of the Hesperus for a hundred yards. The sea shone like a bronze mirror in the sun. Luke was amazed. They must have driven the length of a city block. He couldn’t have found his way back to Leo’s yacht without a map.
The cart stopped in front of a black-sided building. As Luke was collecting his bags, a guy in a lab coat popped his head out of the door. Short and squat with a bottom-heavy, bowling ball build. His sunburned face was either cheery—His eyes, how they twinkle, Luke thought; His dimples, how merry!—or faux-cheery, as his eyes shone with cold scrutiny.
“Dr. Nelson, yes?” he said. “Of course—you have Clayton’s eyes… and nose! I’ve been waiting on your arrival. Come in, quickly.”
9.
LUKE FOLLOWED THE MAN down a hallway that doglegged into a small, dark room. A bank of monitors dominated one wall. Strips of medical tape were affixed beneath each monitor, all labeled in black Sharpie: Lab 1; Lab 2; Mess; Nelson’s Chambers; Toy’s Chambers; Westlake’s Chambers; Water Closet; Kennel/Storage; O2 Purification; Containment; Quarantine.
Most of the monitors were either black or fuzzed with static. The few still in operation offered stationary black-and-white shots, similar to a surveillance video. One, Toy’s Chambers, offered a fish-eye view of modest sleeping quarters: a cot that hinged down from a curved wall, one wafer-thin mattress, a latticework of steel grating that functioned as a walkway.
“The power could be failing,” the man—who had yet to identify himself—told Luke. “We don’t know. Our communication link isn’t working.”
“How long?”
“How long what?” The man turned and stuck out his hand. “Dr. Conrad Felz, by the way.”
“You’re my brother’s partner?”
Felz made a sour face. “Have you talked to your brother lately?”
“Not in some time, no.”
“Weeks? Months?”
A strained smile from Luke. “A titch longer than that.”
It had been over eight years since they had spoken. But why burden Felz with their dour brotherly history?
Felz’s chin jutted. “Partner. Huh. I don’t know if Clayton’s ever had a partner—more subordinates. Subservients. Not that I’m complaining.”
It sure sounds like you’re complaining, Luke thought but didn’t say.
“Clayton doesn’t exactly play nicely with others,” Felz went on. “I’m sure you were jabbed by the pointy end of that particular stick, being the younger brother.”
“Not so much as you’d think. Unless you count being ignored as abusive.”
Felz’s eyebrow cocked, as if to say: You don’t consider that abuse? “Clayton does what he does,” he said, “and because he’s supremely talented, his ways are tolerated. It’s the way it is with savants. Or geniuses, if you’d prefer. That line is so thin sometimes.
“We were competitors at first,” Felz went on, “though I’m certain Clayton never saw it that way. Your brother competes against DNA helixes, against scientific absolutes, against the universe. The notion of competing with another person is, I’m convinced, totally foreign to him.”
Felz’s fleshy lower lip protruded sullenly, a foamy dab of spit collecting in its vermilion zone.
“Your brother and I met at MIT,” Felz said. “He didn’t have to apply, of course; his reputation allowed him to waltz on in. I soon discovered that Clayton wasn’t so much driven as pathological. The man doesn’t sleep.”
It was true that as Clayton hit adolescence, sleep had become nonessential. He’d been up at all hours, squirreled down in his basement lab at twelve years old. He’d stopped going to school by then; he’d been granted an exemption when it became clear that his knowledge outstripped that of his teachers—the equivalent of forcing a piano prodigy to take lessons from a dotty church organist.
“What your brother was doing even before he arrived at MIT was astounding,” Felz said. “Were you on hand to see what he did with that mouse?”
Of course Luke remembered the mouse…
Ernie. The mouse’s name was Ernie. Clay named all of his mice—a grisly fixation, considering their fates. Clayton had heard about this anesthesiologist, a Dr. Charles Vacanti, who’d grafted a human ear onto a mouse’s back; the “ear” was cartilage grown by seeding cow cartilage cells into a biodegradable ear-shaped mold, which was then implanted under the mouse’s skin.